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It's down to two: Jim Balsillie vs. NHL

It's officially down to a two-horse race – BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie vs. the NHL – in the sweepstakes for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes after a day filled with legal twists and turns, many of them bad for the league.

It's officially down to a two-horse race – BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie vs. the NHL – in the sweepstakes for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes after a day filled with legal twists and turns, many of them bad for the league.

Ice Edge LLC officially pulled its $150 million (all figures U.S.) offer off the table, leaving the NHL and its $140 million bid as the only buyer who would keep the Coyotes in Phoenix as the team heads into an auction starting tomorrow.

But the news wasn't all positive for Balsillie and his attempts to move the team to Hamilton. His new, improved $242.5 million bid – including $50 million to the city of Glendale if it would drop its opposition to the sale – met with silence from politicians worried about losing the team.

"Glendale is deferring to the court and the NHL to determine the merits of this and the other bids," Glendale spokesman Gary Husk told the Star in an email.

In Glendale, politicians went in camera yesterday to discuss the Coyotes situation, saying any deal could only be ratified in a public meeting.

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The withdrawal of Ice Edge – a group of Canadian and American investors working with Wayne Gretzky – was noted in a footnote in a statement from league commissioner Gary Bettman.

"I was advised today that the Ice Edge Group does not intend to participate in the auction," Bettman said.

The point of Bettman's declaration was that there was nothing nefarious at work when the league decided to put forward its own bid, while, roughly at the same time, turn down Balsillie as an owner.

Among the many legal decisions Judge Redfield T. Baum must make before he awards the team, he must decide the legality of the league's dual roles, along with the precedent-setting nature of foisting an owner and a city upon a league against its wishes.

Balsillie's camp moved on many fronts. First, they want Baum to throw out the league's demand that a relocation fee would be close to $190 million, charging the league "misled" when it argued providing relocation input to Balsillie's camp would bog down the proceedings.

Balsillie's camp went alone and came up with $12 million for relocation.

"The NHL improperly withheld from PSE dozens of documents, spanning well over thousands of pages, until the Saturday of Labour Day weekend," said Balsillie's lawyers, who said there's information in the documents that is "devastating" to the NHL's position on a relocation to Hamilton.

They also said it sheds light on the NHL's "bad faith" approach toward Balsillie's ownership application and that there isn't enough time to put together a legal case before the auction. The information is blacked out.

And a day after extending a $50 million olive branch to Glendale, Balsillie's lawyers switched gears by tearing apart Glendale's arguments that the Balsillie camp had anything to do with leaks to the media regarding other bids or chilling the bidding process.

"Glendale's allegations and its inferences from skimpy evidence do not come close to the fraud, collusion and gross unfairness," said the brief.

That the NHL hasn't lost the city – a significant ally in its battle for the Coyotes – was a small piece of good news for the league that is haunted by poor business decisions of its other owners.

Yesterday, former Nashville Predators owner William (Boots) Del Biaggio learned he is going to prison for more than eight years for bilking investors.

Del Biaggio, whose ownership group beat Balsillie for the Predators two seasons ago, pleaded guilty to one charge of forging financial documents to obtain $110 million in loans from several banks and two NHL owners – Craig Leopold of the Minnesota Wild and Los Angeles Kings owner AEG. Del Biaggio used the money to purchase a controlling interest in the Predators. Del Biaggio was also ordered to repay about $67 million.

He's not the only one in trouble:

Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks defaulted on a $525 million loan on March 31, starting a process that could see his creditors force him into bankruptcy, thereby putting his ownership of the team and baseball's Texas Rangers at risk.

Tampa Bay co-owner Len Barrie could soon be bought out by partner Oren Koules. Their partnership soured in the past six months and Barrie's other investments are drying up, according to reports.

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